Digital greenbacks

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October 3, 2019 DIGITAL GREENBACKS? Two U.S. lawmakers want the Federal Reserve to consider creating a digital dollar. In a letter sent to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) write that the U.S. dollar might lose influence if another country or private company creates a widely used cryptocurrency, and ask whether the central bank is considering creating its digital greenback. “We are concerned that the primacy of the U.S. Dollar could be in long-term jeopardy from wide adoption of digital fiat currencies,” they say. Full story FREE MONEY: You don’t have to be a trader on Coinbase to make a profit. Starting Wednesday, customers of the San Francisco-based exchange can earn interest on their holdings of the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC. The annual percentage yield is 1.25 percent. “We’re trying to build more ways for customers to grow their wealth on Coinbase,” said Coinbase product manager Paul Katsen. Account holders with at least one dollar’s worth of USDC will automatically accrue rewards on their holdings, with no additional cost or fees. Full story WAIT ALMOST OVER: Telegram Open Network (TON) is on track for its planned launch, according to an email from the company sent to investors on Wednesday. Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs, a startup building tools for TON developers, confirmed the authenticity of the email to CoinDesk. Investors need to provide Telegram with their public keys by Oct. 16 using the key generator to receive the tokens, or “grams,” they bought. Notably, the message says Telegram itself will recuse itself from running the network: “Investors have to select validators. Neither Telegram nor the TON Foundation will serve as validators post-launch.” Full story FLAT-PACKER FIRST: In a “world first,” IKEA Iceland has taken part in a commercial transaction on ethereum using smart contracts and EU-licensed e-money to facilitate the settlement of an order from a local retailer, Nordic Store. The transaction was carried out on a platform provided by supply chain management firm Tradeshift and used “programmable digital cash” from ConsenSys-backed Monerium, according to an announcement on Tuesday. Nordic Store bought goods from IKEA and settled an e-invoice using Monerium’s tokenized Icelandic krona. Full story SWISS ETP: Another crypto-based financial product is coming to the Swiss stock exchange SIX. Fintech firm Amun and crypto fintech service Bitcoin Suisse launched the Swiss franc-denominated Amun Bitcoin Suisse BTC/ETH exchange-traded product (ETP) under the “ABBA” ticker. Nine parts bitcoin and one part ether by percentage, the ETP captures some 75 percent of the total cryptocurrency market cap in one listed product. In an interview, Amun CEO Hany Rashwan said the ETP serves as an important financial hedge and is uniquely Swiss. Full story POOR START: October hasn’t kicked off well for bitcoin traders looking to capture the rebound to $8,511 on Tuesday, as prices were swiftly rejected back below $8,300 in the Asian trading hours this morning. The top crypto is currently changing hands at $8,240, representing a 1.5-percent decline over the last 24 hours. Should the bulls fail to push BTC back over previous resistance at $9,400, further price drops are likely. Full story BACK TO SCHOOL:  Leading VC Chris Dixon is launching a school to train young startups in the ways of crypto. “We are going to run a startup school for crypto-specific startups and what we’ve learned over the last 7 years as best practices in this category,” Dixon, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told a TechCrunch conference. A landing page for the project says the school will help "crypto-curious builders navigate the idea maze."  WHO WON #CRYPTOTWITTER   Copyright © 2019 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  Our mailing address is:  250 Park Avenue South New York, NY, 10003, US  Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list